VANCOUVER – The Kelowna flag flap has intensified. Denied an opportunity to hoist a “Right to Life” banner over the city’s municipal headquarters, a local anti-abortion group now says it will fly its message–minus some contentious wording–beside four local schools, and warns that as long as the flags flutter overhead, any counter-demonstrators will be electronically monitored.

Kelowna Right to Life Society executive director Marlon Bartram says that after getting the bum’s rush from city authorities last month, he approached a number of local schools for permission to fly his group’s flag on their grounds. “As a movement, we’re always looking for new ways to get our message out,” he says.

Four schools — three of them Catholic, one Evangelical Christian — have agreed to let the flags fly during Protect Human Life Week, a city-sanctioned event that begins next Monday. Mr. Bartram went to local schools after Kelowna’s mayor and council decided to rescind their invitation to hoist the society’s proposed banner. The brightly coloured flag paired the slogan “From Conception to Natural Death” with an image depicting the progressing stages of life, from infancy to old age.

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Pro-life groups caught wind of the flag proposal and complained. Mr. Bartram says his group then altered the flag, removing the slogan that some had singled out as particularly nettlesome. The city then decided to terminate its flag-raising program altogether, figuring it was more trouble than it was worth.

“City Hall should be a place where we’re unifying people, not trying to establish camps on different political spectrums,” Councillor Luke Stack explained at the time. The city had previously flown banners recognizing Gay Pride celebrations and other events, without much controversy.

Kelowna did not, however, rescind its proclamation recognizing Protect Human Life Week, which will proceed as scheduled, beginning with a gathering at a local park. This is the fifth consecutive year that the city has made a Protect Human Life Week proclamation. “The mayor has said he has no intention of rescinding that proclamation, because to do so would be discriminatory,” said Mr. Bartram. “We very much appreciate him standing firm.”

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He’s prepared, should more sparks fly. “Due to a handful of emails threatening to burn or destroy the flag if flown over City Hall, all [school] locations will have 24-hour video surveillance of the grounds surrounding their flag poles,” reads a statement Mr. Bartram distributed to media this week, on behalf of his society.

The surveillance is just part of normal school yard procedure and does not require additional equipment, Mr. Bartram clarified in an interview. “We just want to let the public know that they are being watched,” he said.

It’s not unusual for members of his group and other anti-abortion activists to receive threats, he noted. “We hold a weekly vigil outside the [Kelowna General] Hospital where we are sometimes insulted. Sometimes people throw objects at us. Some people regard us as a fringe group, as radicals.”

Pro-abortion activist Joyce Arthur doesn’t condone such abuse; however, she’s still hoping Kelowna’s elected officials will revoke their support for Protect Human Life Week, “because it strongly implies that Kelowna does not respect women’s legal and constitutional rights.”

The city says the proclamation “is not an endorsement, but of course it is,” says Ms. Arthur, the Vancouver-based executive director of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada. Yet her group had not raised the matter until last month, when the flag flap first caught fire.

Ms. Arthur said she’s disappointed that some Kelowna schools have agreed to allow the toned-down anti-abortion flag to fly over their grounds, but says there’s little point protesting their decisions. “They are already [involved with the] religious indoctrination of children, and there’s nothing we can do about that,” she said.

Would her coalition consider other counter-measures, such as asking Kelowna to proclaim a pro-abortion week? “I don’t want to rule that out,” she said.

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